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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Indulging in bacon too frequently may be hazardous to your health, a new study suggests, while taking the skin off your chicken before you cook it might not be so good for you either.

Dr. Dominique S. Michaud of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and her colleagues found that people who ate bacon five times a week or more were nearly 60-percent more likely to develop bladder cancer, while those who ate skinless chicken this frequently had a 52-percent greater risk of the disease.

Some meat products contain nitrosamines, which are known to cause bladder cancer, Michaud and her team note in their report, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. But the studies that have attempted to investigate the meat-bladder cancer link have been small and most have not separated out the effects of different types of meat.

To better understand the relationship, Michaud and her team looked at data for 47,422 men and 88,471 women participating in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study and the Nurse's Health Study, respectively. Participants were followed for up to 22 years, during which time 808 developed bladder cancer.

People who ate bacon and other processed meats frequently were also more likely to smoke and to take in more fat and fewer vitamins, the researchers found. They were also less likely to exercise.

The association between the total meat consumption and bladder cancer was not statistically significant. But those who ate bacon five or more times per week were 59-percent more likely to develop bladder cancer than those who never did. Also, men and women who ate chicken this often were 52-percent more likely to develop bladder cancer than those who never ate skinless chicken.

Compared with skinless chicken, cooked chicken with skin is known to contain a smaller amount of heterocyclic amines, carcinogenic compounds that form when meat is cooked at high temperatures, the researchers note.

The researchers suggest that nitrosamines, heterocyclic amines, or both are responsible for the health effects of bacon seen in the current study, but they note that their findings must be confirmed by other research teams before any conclusions can be made.

This January saw a vegan phenomenon as over 20,000 people signed up to veganuary the campaign to encourage people to try vegan diets.

Whilst VegfestUK continues to see record numbers of visitors to VegfestUK events ( over 10,000 to Brighton centre and London Olympia ) with an impressive number of visitors to the very first vegfest in Scotland at the SECC in Glasgow there still remains a dilemma.

The statistics are back for vegfestUK Glasgow and whilst the overall numbers were impressive disappointingly only 8% were meat eaters.

Campaigners are quick to point out that simply replacing meat with cheese will not make the world a healthier more sustainable more ethical place so it's important to persuade vegetarians to go vegan.

However if many more meat eaters don't quickly switch onto a wholefood plant based diet chronic health diseases will continue to rise the planet is in dire jeopardy we will run out of water and there is not enough land to waste food feeding it to farm an…